1. Learn to isolate your experiences and take time (outside the bedroom) to heal your mental wounds. This is paramount. If you had a negative sexual experience in the past, address it and take appropriate steps to regaining a healthy attitude – often if we don’t want one negative sexual experience to matter, we make the rest of them meaningless as well.

2. Go slow. Even if you like it fast and passionate and breathless and rough, pace yourself, take it as slowly as you can. Every grab and squeeze becomes so much more intense when it’s slow and intentional.

3. Bond beforehand, make it a more holistic experience. Merge your minds before you do your bodies.

4. Appreciate everything. You will not render sex with the love of your life less meaningful if you learn to cultivate appreciation for every experience you have. There doesn’t have to be “worthwhile sex” and “shit I did just to do it.” You can enjoy things and people for who they are and what they are in your life, nothing more nothing less.

5. Maintain eye contact.

6. Stop speaking. (Have a conversation about this beforehand, though…) The point being to fine-tune your ability to communicate with one another via your subconscious, minute body language. The more you become attuned to how your partner(s) bodies respond to different movements the more you will become educated you in a way you simply couldn’t be if you’re always mindlessly waiting for the “I’m coming” declaration. (Nothing wrong with that! Just that nonverbal communication especially at orgasm is extremely powerful).

7. Speaking of, kiss them when they orgasm, or in some other way show them that you are happy to see them enjoying it. (People just generally have more intense orgasms when they feel comfortable and know their pleasure is just as desired by their partner.)

8. Let go of your body hangups by realizing that nobody is judging you as much as you are judging you. Be with someone who appreciates your body in whatever form it comes in that day, and begin to see how sex can be a lot more than physical contact once you’re no longer preoccupied with stiffening, posing and adjusting your body in (what you perceive) to be “flattering” ways.

9. Lay with each other and talk afterwards (or beforehand, really). Not about the weather or how great they are in bed, but just about, you know, life stuff. Get to know them in an intimate setting.

11. Go on a “stay-cation.” Book a hotel room just for one night in your city, or if you have the means do a quick weekend trip. “Foreign” places, even if they are nearby, are instantly erotic, probably because your daily tasks and stressors aren’t visible, so you can focus more.

12. Be kind. That may sound silly, but people can really feel the difference between when you’re just throwing them around and really appreciating their presence. Touch them kindly, speak to them kindly. Ask them what makes them feel great and tell them what you want in that moment.

13. If telling feels too uncomfortable for you, show them. Use your hands to place their hands. Gently adjust their body the way you would like. Do not be forceful about this, though. Make it clear that you’re simply instructing them – they’ll most likely appreciate the effort and reciprocate.

14. Allow yourself to react to things naturally, allow whatever sounds and movements your body naturally responds with. Don’t force or craft a performance. It’s a little scary to release your inhibitions, especially if you’re naturally self-conscious, you’ll want to structure and limit your reactions so as not to do something off-putting to your partner. But the reality is, people can sense whether or not you’re being genuine, and they’ll probably get off so much more knowing you’re really, sincerely into it.

15. Do it in parts. Keep the lights on. Stop and hang out or talk and eat and then go back for Round 2. Often people shut the lights and their eyes and just do it to get it done and disassociate the person they’re having sex with from the person they’re hanging out with, really for the sake of shielding their own vulnerabilities. To hell with that though.

16. Let yourself feel. You cannot guard yourself from “bad” feelings without simultaneously also numbing yourself from the “good” ones. If you’re going to be reserved and half-hearted about it because you’re afraid to get attached and what not, you’re never going to enjoy it completely.

17. Choose partners who respect you as a person, who are interested in you as a human, who are attracted to you not because you’re just another walking penis or vagina, but because they find you funny or interesting or really great to talk to. Meaningful sex most often happens between people who are attracted to one another for non-physical reasons.